Tuesday, 15 November 2016

13th November was as unlucky
for stalwart backers of the foreign policy-line embodied by Hillary Clinton
just as 8th November was for her domestic supporters. In both Bulgaria and
Moldova, the voters rejected women candidates for president who had been openly
endorsed by Washington and Brussels. Despite this patronage and boosting by the Euro-Atlantic power-centres neither woman broke through the glass ceiling. Or was it both were seen as token females put up for the highest office by shadowy male oligarchs anxious to keep power in countries blighted by poverty and corruption?

Do Bulgaria or Moldova matter?

Having witnessed how small states with
tiny electorates but vital Electoral College votes dealt body- blows to Hillary
Clinton's hopes of winning the US Presidency, it would be short-sighted and
arrogant - as the Euro-Atlantic establishment has so often been - to dismiss
voters in small East European states as irrelevant.

Having presumed that Bulgaria
was irretrievably anchored in the Euro-Atlantic power-structure by its
accession to both NATO and the EU, the choice of an openly pro-Russian
candidate for president of the country is a wake-up call to Brussels and
Washington. Similarly, the Moldovan elite had seemed locked into an
"irreversible" course as its premier put it to integration - better
said subordination - to the Euro-Atlantic model. In both cases, the majority of
citizens thought different.

Until the implosion of the
neo-con regime-change foreign policy embodied by Hillary Clinton and her
attack-dog for Eastern Europe, Victoria Neuland, we could have been confident
that the heavy-hands of Washington and Brussels would have pressured both
Bulgaria and Moldova to reverse such results. Yet even cash inducements like
the IMF's sudden dole of US$36 million to the Moldovan regime just six days
before the poll could not buy enough support . Even more striking was the
Bulgarian public's rejection of the pro-EU candidate who had boasted about how
much EU aid to the poverty- stricken Balkan EU member was at stake. What
ordinary Bulgarians and Moldovans know, and what the Euro-Atlantic elites and
media never admit, is that EU funds have been a motor of the corruption
suffocating their economies. Precisely because of the easy pickings EU and IMF
cash provides to the ruling elites, they have no incentive to act in the
majority's interests. Real reforms are tough to enact and make the people
richer not the insiders in the political class.

Until Trump's election, the
USA and EU deployed their massive power and influence to making any vote
against their policy-options seem futile despite popular recognition of how
they had gutted the productive aspects of both the Bulgarian and the Moldovan
economies. Sunday's elections in both countries may be straws in the wind. They
are victories for the genuine people power of the ballot box, not the
street-based populism of crowds favoured by Washington and Brussels to impose
"people power" on the people. It is striking that the Bulgarian
premier, Borisov, who is often criticised as "authoritarian" by state
media in the EU like Deutsche Welle and the BBC as well as by Euronews,
immediately resigned. He drew the democratic consequence of the defeat of his own candidate, the lady speaker, Tsetska Tsatcheva. But the premier of Moldova, Filip, who has been boosted by Euronews
etc. as a model European, immediately said the popular vote against his candidate, the ex-World Bank official, Maia Sandu, would have no
effect on his policies!

Even so, the election of
advocates of better ties to Russia is a small geo-political earthquake in
states NATO and the EU saw as securely-controlled bases for launching
anti-Putin policies. No-one has died in these tremors in Bulgaria and Moldova.
But the fact that the upheaval has been peaceful through the ballot-box leaves
only violence as a viable way of reversing the will of the people. Both
Bulgaria in 1997 and Moldova in 2009 saw violent Putsches from the street
enthusiastically endorsed in Brussels and Washington as "People
Power". If the kind of Soros-sponsored protests Americans themselves are
now witnessing at home against Trump are switched on in the East European
dissident states the counter-explosion could destabilise the whole EU-NATO
project in the vast post-Communist region which had seemed willing to lick the
West's hand no matter how often the West had imposed destructive
poverty-promoting policies.

But now it would be unwise to
think that the East European dogs can be kicked with impunity. They could turn
vicious as the French say and bite back. A change of course in Washington could
re-earn the pro-American consensus squandered over the last twenty-five years
by the cynical Euro-Atlantic consensus. But can Western elites swallow their
pride and learn the lesson of popular alienation. Or will they sink into denial
and double-down on the policies which have rendered them despised by ordinary
folk who see through phony rhetoric about swallowing touch economic medicine
for their own good. East Europeans know that playing the reform politician not
the entrepreneur is the way to get rich in their societies. Sadly, a lot of
people in the West are coming to a similar conclusion.

So the Trump Effect has
emboldened the ordinary voters of Eastern Europe to demand that their elite put
the people first. Maybe the Donald didn't mean that to be the outflow of his
victory in the USA, but that's how people there see it. If the rigid and
impoverishing policies promoted by the US-EU consensus cannot be revised, then
more results like those in Bulgaria and Moldova can be expected.

What should worry the US-EU
establishment is that elections are coming in countries which won't be so easy
to ignore as small East European states. Next spring, the Dutch and the French
vote. The anti-establishment tide in those two important EU and NATO states is
running strongly. Years of rhetoric about reform and anti-corruption strategies
across the New Europe of the old Soviet bloc coincided with rampant
influence-peddling and bribe-taking.

"Drain the Swamp!"
was one of Trump's most effective slogans. Across Europe, it echoes powerfully
precisely because of the hypocrisy and cynicism of domestic and Brussels-based
elites who talked so loudly about their commitment to the right kind of
anti-corruption strategies but, as East Europeans say, have their left hand
cupped behind their backs.